Kimberly Fisher

Leisure and Time-Use Perspectives on Volunteering

Taking a time-use perspective, this chapter examines where volunteering fits in people’s daily, weekly, and annual time use in different countries and world regions. Within a person’s total time-use pattern, the central focus is on free time and the portion within it that is devoted to volunteering and associational activity. Formal volunteering (FV), whether for service programs or associations, is most often a kind of serious leisure, defined below. Such activity has its own temporal requirements that have to be coordinated with other use of free time, as well as with paid work and non-work obligations (such as family care or personal care, like sleep). Informal volunteering (INV) – volunteering done more spontaneously by individuals without any organizational auspices – is also discussed, as is the travel related to FV and INV. Substantial attention is devoted to options in time-use measurement and methodology, and to the special value of such methods to enhance and overcome biases in survey interview methodology.

Examining flexible labour in Europe : the first three waves of the ECHP

This paper uses the European Community Household Panel study (ECHP) to profile labour market experiences in the European Union. Cross-sectional snapshots of labour markets miss out on part of the range of transitions between employment and non-employment. Panel data allows a more accurate assessment of the degree to which experience of unemployment and household work poverty are shared or concentrated among sections of national populations. Indeed, we find that the proportion of months which individuals and which all working age adult members of households spent in unemployment accounts for some variations in labour market experiences. This paper demonstrates the value of focusing on transitions between employment and non-employment (as opposed to tracking transitions in and out of unemployment) when examining the impact of the flexible labour market on earnings and poverty. We also examine the consistency of individual employment histories, and propose strategies for dealing with inconsistencies in information offered by respondents.